by Paul Neuhaus
I turned to Squire. “Did you put him up to this?”
Squire shook his head. “Uh-uh. He volunteered.”
I turned back to Calesius. “How come?”
Cal flushed a little. “For two reasons. One so I could let you guys in when the time came, and two so I could keep an eye on Keri Wiener.”
That took me aback for a moment. “You have a thing for Keri Wiener?”
He made a pinch sign in the air. “Just a little one.”
Huh. That at least was one thing my artificial reality had in common with my real reality.
Elijah pushed forward. “How is Keri? Is she okay?”
Cal nodded. “There’s a whole bunch of space hippies up there. Prometheus gave them the run of the place. The Olympians hate them, but there’s not much they can do since Prometheus is in charge.”
A voice from behind made us turn. It was Hermes, floating above the lip of the outcropping. “Shall we go inside?” he said. Behind him, the Titans waited. Behind the Titans were a whole mess of smushed zombies.
“What happens once we’re in?” I asked. “Do you have a specific plan or a route we should take?”
Hermes shrugged. “I was never in the basement. What I know about it is it’s mostly Hephaestus’ workshop. A lot of bellows and furnaces and whatnot. That and it eventually leads to the top.”
That was less information than I’d hoped for, but we did have the Titans on our side. I couldn’t imagine there’d be much along our route that could stand in the way of the elder gods. I took a moment to assess my squad. A ragtag group of men with guns, a bunch of old, dead heroes and a parcel of the meanest most powerful creatures from Greek myth. It’d have to do.
As I surveyed the troops, a detail that’d escaped me at first came clear. Tiresias was surrounded by a cloud of little birds with blue bodies and bright red heads. He caught me looking. “They’re helping me to see,” he said. “By the way, love your outfit.”
I returned his smile and spun on my heel toward the massive door. Elijah fell into step beside me. To his right, and mostly oblivious to the rest of us, his brother Jack marched forward with an eager smile. He looked like a boy scout on an outing. “Why would you bring Jack?” I whispered. “This is no place for a man… in his condition.”
Elijah sighed. “I wish you could go back in time and try and dissuade him. I’m sure you’d have as much luck as I did. By the way, he told me he was in love with you.”
I flushed a bit. I’m not sure why. I had nothing to be embarrassed about—unless you counted the fact, I’d given Jack the runaround since he’d admitted his feelings. “Well, keep an eye on him, would you? He’s a sweet man. Even if he is a pain in the ass.”
El smiled. “Will do,” he said.
We entered an enormous chamber lit by more brasiers. It looked like the Greek equivalent of Dr. Frankenstein’s lab. Hephaestus had clearly been ahead of his time in the area of machine-making. Hell, there were several metal apparatuses I couldn’t even identify.
Cal came up next to me on my left. “The core of the mountain is basically a perfect cylinder. There’s a ramp that circles upward in a corkscrew.” He pointed, and I saw the incline. It was wide enough to accommodate one Titan at a time. Not the best thing tactically, but it’d have to do.
I looked over my shoulder and called, “Hermes! Get up here!”
The dead messenger god was with us quickly.
“This is Cal,” I said. “He’s the one that let us in. More importantly, he had to come down from the top to do it.”
Hermes squinted at Cal. “Weren’t you the stable boy?”
Cal smiled, pleased to be recognized. “Yes, sir. I was. And I am.”
It was Hermes’ turn to smile. “You’re a double agent, aren’t you?”
Cal nodded, starstruck. Hermes held out his hand, so Cal and he could fist bump. Cal’s hand passed through Hermes’, but the gesture still made the boy’s day.
We reached the ramp and started to ascend. “Alright,” I said. “There were a shit-ton of zombies out there, so Prometheus clearly knew we were coming. What other resistance can we expect?”
“Well,” the boy replied. “Like I say, this is just one big cylinder. Like an airshaft. I would expect an attack from the air.”
Even as Cal finished speaking, a screech rang out. It sounded like it came from the biggest, most ill-tempered bird of prey ever.
I looked up and, bearing down on us from above, were a flock of griffin. Great feathered wings. Lion bodies. Eagle heads. I’d compare them to bats because there were just so many of them, but they were so much larger and more intimidating than any bats could ever be. I won’t lie: I panicked. I had no ranged weapon and no shield, so I stooped and covered my head in a futile attempt at self-protection.
Fortunately, I was surrounded by guys with flamethrowers. Without missing a beat, the bronies, Squire and Jack all pointed their weapons upward and let fly. The griffins flew into a nearly-solid wall of flame and heat. When they passed through—mostly nothing more than singed—my crew adjusted their weapons as a single unit. Clearly, Squire had drilled them on the proper use of the armament.
The one person in my entourage who was at a clear disadvantage was Petey. He’d stayed aloft on Pegasus as we ascended the ramp. He had to dip down below the initial flame layer and a few of the griffins clawed at him and his mount as they broke through. Wisely, the hip hop impresario let his own flamethrower dangle at his side and picked up a medieval-looking lance that hung in a strap at his side. As he bobbed and wove through the cloud of griffin, I was reminded of Joust, the 80s video game featuring mounted aerial combat. Petey too and been practicing. He and Pegasus moved almost as a single entity. The M.C. delivered killing strokes with precision.
Eventually, some of the griffin broke through so they could swipe at the forces on the incline. There wasn’t any room for them to land otherwise there would’ve been more close combat. Instead, a few of the Titans received deep, raking blows from powerful claws. One of the elder gods—whom I didn’t know—was clustered by bird-headed lions and yanked from the ramp. He fell several dozen feet but turned his body in midair so that he crushed his attackers with his own weight. I watched as, after his impact, he shook his head and rose again to his feet.
Following my brief panic, I raised my head again and looked upward. The bronies were doing a good job of keeping the griffins away from us, but one did sneak through. It came down at us at an angle, its claws at the ready. I turned my head and saw it would hit an unaware Jack dead-on. That was unacceptable. I braced myself and raised my gladius. I was nearly ripped off of my feet as the blade entered the creature’s chest and, thanks to its forward momentum, cut all the way down to the groin. It took a moment for the griffin to realize it was mortally wounded. It screamed and fell away from us at an angle. It dropped to the floor below and, I’m sure, never got up again.
Still the screeching continued. Still the creatures plummeted down on us from above. “Cripes! How many griffins does this motherfucker have?!” I said over the din.
From my left shoulder, Cal said, “Prometheus has been breeding monsters. He wants the world to be like it was in ancient times.” For the first time, I realized the stable boy had come to us unarmed so I hung a little closer to him to offer whatever protection I could.
“Swell,” I replied. “There’s nothing better than a megalomaniac with a nostalgia kink.”
“Look out!” Cal said, pointing.
There was a griffin headed directly for us. We would’ve both died if Elijah hadn’t hit it with a burst of hot death. Even as the monster spun away trailing smoke, Hermes came forward, floating just off the ground. “Cronus wants the flamethrowers!” he said.
I started to reply, but Cronus’ giant hand cut me off. It pressed into our view on the right. It was clearly waiting for the flamethrowers. I didn’t trust Cronus, but I trusted Hermes. “Give him your flamethrowers!” I shouted.
Sebastian, El, Chad, Ty a
nd even Petey dropped their flamethrowers into the enormous palm. Cronus’ hand withdrew, and I followed it. It went to the Titan’s mouth and it popped the flamethrowers in like so many Pop Rocks. The elder god chewed for a moment and then he leaned forward and spat a cloud of fire so enormous it filled the entire space above our heads. The griffin were enveloped by a dense cloud of hot gas and all of them either burst into flames or were instantly consumed. The ones who caught fire plummeted into the strange machinery below them, destroying it.
Griffin problem solved.
I wasted no time plowing forward again. “Everybody! Follow me! There’s a landing above us!” Indeed, there was a platform without any railings. For a moment, I hoped it would be the entrance to Olympus proper, but I had to scold myself. We hadn’t ascended far enough for that to be the case. I was the first to reach it and to see that, embedded in the wall was another titanic door. I went over and pressed against it, but it wouldn’t budge. I turned to Cal. “Did you come through here on the way down?”
“Yes, but I was coming from the other direction. It didn’t have any of this fancy bas relief.”
“Why didn’t you leave it open?” I asked, frustrated.
“I didn’t know it’d lock behind me.”
I took a couple of steps back and looked up. Cal was right: the portal was covered by elaborate bas relief sculpture. Near the bottom—so I was eye to eye with them—were life-size representations of Hades and Persephone.
Hades had his left hand raised, palm out, and Persephone had her right hand raised. The hands were held about chest-height. Unlike the rest of the sculpture, the two hands, while still very detailed, were recessed rather than extruded. My immediate reaction was to put my left hand into Hades’ palm and my right into Persephone’s. The fit was snug in both cases (indicating I was on the right track), but nothing happened. I looked over and said over my shoulder, “Does anybody know how to work this cockamamy lock?”
Sebastian scratched the scar running down his face. “Offhand, I’d say you’d need to be Hades and Persephone to activate it.”
I rolled my eyes. “How is that practical? What if Hephaestus needed to get into his workshop and Hades and Persephone weren’t around?”
“You’re asking me?” Squire replied.
A voice came from behind Squire. A woman’s voice. “Maybe you don’t have to be Hades and Persephone… Maybe you just have to be Lord and Lady of the Underworld.” It was Amanda—or, rather, her shade. Beside her was Connie.
“Or ex-Lord and -Lady of the Underworld.” Connie added. Both shades brushed past Sebastian and the bronies to join me at the door.
“How’d you guys get here?” I asked, pleasantly surprised. “You’re not Heroes of Elysium.”
“We got a day pass from Hades,” Amanda replied. “He knows what’s going down. He wants to help.” With that, she stepped forward and pressed her spectral hand into Persephone’s palm. Connie followed suit with Hades’ hand. The door immediately creaked and swung open on its hinges.
Crazy Indiana Jones door problem solved.
“Alright, everybody! Press on, press on! We’re through.” Again, I took the lead with the bronies clustered around me, Amanda and Connie on either side and Pegasus just above. “I still don’t understand that door,” I said to my two ghostly friends. “It doesn’t make any kinda sense.”
Connie shrugged his shoulders. “We’re through. Let’s worry about the specifics later.”
The room beyond the doorway was another vast silo. The walls depicted a giant, episodic account of the history of the earth. The weird thing about it was it was creating itself in real time. Just above our level was the appearance of Olympus in the Nevada desert. Just below that was a depiction of the very assault we were staging. The higher you went, the further back you went in time. But I was far more interested in the present. “Hey,” I said. “Maybe we should just hang out here and see how this whole thing turns out.”
Hermes was just behind me. “That’s not the way it works. It’s recording what goes down; not predicting it.”
“Too bad,” I replied. “I wanted to see if I ever get my Gene Simmons bass guitar back.”
Tiresias spoke up. “You lost your Gene Simmons bass guitar?”
I copped a guilty expression. “That. Is a long story.”
The ramps in the new silo didn’t hug the walls in a corkscrew formation. These rose and hit a landing. At each landing, another ramp rose going up in the opposite direction. This crisscross pattern persisted as far as my eyes could see. “How tall is this fucking mountain?” I said with a sigh.
“It’s no Everest,” Hermes replied. “But it’s no slouch either.”
“Okay,” I replied. “But my calves are starting to hurt.”
Jack Wiener chimed in immediately and rather awkwardly. “And handsome calves they are too.”
I gave him the side-eye as I started walking up the incline. “Thank you, Jack. That was both timely and relevant.”
I flashed Elijah a glance, mostly to blame him again for bringing his brother. El smiled. “Well, he’s not wrong. You do have nice calves.”
When we got to the first landing, I looked up the next ramp and realized we had a problem. Coming down the ramp were what I thought were sumo wrestlers. I looked closer and realized it was just more zombies—big, fat, bloated zombies. They were clustered so thick that occasionally one would bump into another one. Whenever that happened, the bumpee would explode—thanks, no doubt to his body being full of volatile gas. Each explosion set off a chain reaction where the bumpee would set off the bumper and all the zombies in the immediate vicinity. You would think this pattern would greatly reduce their numbers, but there were just so many of them to start with. From my vantage point, I could see that all the ramps above us were thick with these explode-o zombies. “Well…” I said. “This could be a problem.”
Then I heard Hermes shout, “Eyes down! Eyes down, everyone!”
I almost looked up and back despite what the messenger god was saying. Fortunately, everyone else pointed their faces at the ground. I didn’t want to be odd man out, so I did the same.
As a body brushed past me, I heard a hiss and I knew intuitively what was going down. I knew that, since the creature’s back was to me, I could raise my eyes again. In front of me, scaling the ramp toward the gas zombies, was Medusa, looking exactly the way I’d seen her last. She was naked and carrying a spear. I knew she wasn’t going to need the spear, though since she’d be relying on her innate talents instead. Everywhere she pointed her gaze, one or more sumo zombies turned to stone. She didn’t miss a single one as she ascended, and I knew all we needed to do was give her some room.
After a moment, I said, “Saddle-up, people. Let’s not keep the snake lady waiting.”
Our only problem going forward was the stone zombies blocked the path for the larger creatures bringing up the rear. Those of us in front did our best to knock the statues off the ramp as we went. Most of them broke off neatly at the ankles and toppled into the blackness below us. “Jeeze,” Chad Kroeger said. “It looks like this wacky adventure’s gonna work out.”
I spun toward him. “Don’t you dare jinx us, Chad Kroeger.”
The man—who was not the lead singer of Nickelback—flushed and said, “You’re right. I wasn’t thinking.”
The ascent was grueling. At least for me. I’d spent a decade locked in a trailer, so it was remarkable anyone would notice the niceness of my calves. On the upside, I figured that, if I survived, I was bound to have lost some weight in the process. I tracked our progress based on the mural. We were about to the Spanish Inquisition. “What comes after this, Hermes?”
“Nothing comes after this,” the dead god said. “There’re other silos we could’ve taken, but this one goes directly to the top.”
“Thank gods,” I replied. “I wish I’d peed before we started this.”
“Tie a knot in it,” Hermes said with a grin.
I ignored him and f
ocused on my bladder. On the one hand, it felt like a stupid thing to have to take into account given the magnitude of everything going on around me. On the other hand, it helped me settle the butterflies in my stomach.
When we got to the point where early man left equatorial Africa, I said, “Gods, it’s quiet. Should it be this quiet?”
Hermes nodded. “I’m trying to think what other defenses Prometheus could unleash. Maybe he’s waiting until we get to the top to fully unleash on us.”
I turned to Cal. “What about you? Do you have any intel?”
Calesius made a dismissive sound. “If you wanna know where they’re keeping Keri or you wanna go out, so I can let you back in again, I’m your guy. Otherwise, they don’t tell me shit—and I don’t ask. I was all about keeping a low profile.”
“Okay, well, I guess we’re just gonna have to— “Whatever I was about to say was drowned out by a high-pitched scream from above us. A reptilian scream, if there is such a thing. “That was Medusa! Come on! Pick up the pace!” I started running, and so did the group of friends around me, the Titans and the Heroes of Elysium. In all my years of adventuring, I never thought I’d lead such a disparate (and undeniably cool) group into battle. They made me feel tougher than I was—which was good considering the circumstances.
Those of us in the front stopped knocking over the fat zombie statues. Turns out we’d been wasting our time anyway. The stone effigies were crushed into powder by the relentless progress of the elder gods.
My eyes were jostled by the rhythm of my own jog, so it was hard for me to make out what was going on above me. As far as I could see, the next two or three ramps were covered by statues and nothing more. Medusa had proven not only efficient but fast.
On our third ramp, I noticed there were no statues on the fourth ramp. I saw the reason for that almost too late to stop. I skidded to a halt, throwing my arms up to rein in the people around me (trusting the effect would ripple backward in a way that wouldn’t result in casualties). My trust was not quite misplaced. Our crazy group managed to stop without driving the whole unit off the front edge or dropping anyone off the sides. But only barely.
